A Reincarnation of Anne Bonny, Mary Read and Grace O’Malley

La Cucaracha Chronicles presents a new installment of the popular Smugglers’ Tales series, this time featuring the stories of female smugglers. Tony Yaniz moderates a freeform conversation between three female smugglers and a law enforcement official. As with previous Tales, their stories are completely uncensored – what’s told in the theater doesn’t leave the room!

PEAR Brittany Reeber presents a survey of Sunshine State cinema that spans 70 years of filmmaking and ranges from Hollywood studio classics to oddball documentary and contemporary independent stunners. We’ll explore how the Florida landscape is portrayed. What are the clichés and how are they occasionally subverted? How can a place be a character and how can a setting serve to underscore themes such as escapism, desire, consumption or impermanence?

PEAR John Graham has been the writer, producer, director and editor of 9 short art films that have been screened at over 200 film festivals, gallery venues and awards ceremonies in over 40 countries. Many of these film projects have won Best Film and Best Experimental Film and nominations for awards. His tenth art film, STILL HERE / IMMERDAR was shot in Berlin in 2023 and released in early 2024. This poetic and philosophical film explores the theme of dying beautifully.

Celebrate the season of gratitude and generosity with a jazz concert featuring celebrated vocalist Libby York, with Tom Vaitsas, piano and Jeff Dalton, bass. Welcome the holiday season with a show that entertains while giving back. Attendees are encouraged to bring a canned good for SOS Food Bank. A portion of the ticket proceeds will also be donated.

A regular at the top venues in New York, Chicago and Paris, celebrated vocalist Libby York has been called “a  jazz singer of cool composure and artful subtlety” by The New York Times. Her critically acclaimed album “DreamLand” (Origin Records) was among DownBeat Magazine’s Best of the Year.   “..spotlights her membership in a generation of jazz singers—including Sandy Stewart, Mary Stallings and the late Carol Sloane–who could wrap themselves around a lyric and, with a deep dive, tell a powerful story.” NYC Jazz Record. Libby has recently been welcomed as a voting member of The Recording Academy (Grammys).

Chicago-based jazz pianist Tom Vaitsas started playing professionally in 1992, pulling inspiration from Chicago’s south side scene and from legendary jazz saxophonist Von Freeman.He has performed concerts with jazz greats Von Freeman and Dee Dee Bridgewater and continues to perform at concerts and clubs in and out of Chicago with various groups.

Bassist Jeff Dalton has performed thousands of shows and sessions and recorded with artists from the US, Italy, Spain, Honduras, the Netherlands and Mexico. Dalton makes his home in Key West, but also continues to perform and record with the Lunar Octet and Aron Kaufman’s Dream Ensemble out of Ann Arbor, MI.

PEAR Sarah Danke presents a reading of selected scenes from her upcoming screenplay, Midnight Mirage. This hyper-realistic film takes the viewer on a journey through parties in dank warehouses and desolate parking lots, a battle with teenage hormones and morality, and a very tender care around precious religious traditions that are misunderstood by the majority of this friend group’s peers. It realistically opens viewers up to the emotional struggles with identity and attachment inside of a transracial adoption, centering the narrative of the adoptee. And because it is written by a choreographer, it highlights movement and visual language above dialogue, telling large portions of the story without much text at all.

When you listen to Over the Rhine, the supremely talented musical couple comprised of Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, you quickly fall under the spell of Karin’s timeless voice “which has the power to stop the world in its tracks” (Performing Songwriter). But then the songs start hitting you. Paste magazine writes, “Over the Rhine creates true confessional masterpieces that know neither border nor boundary” and included Bergquist and Detweiler in their list of 100 Best Living Songwriters. Rolling Stone recently wrote, Over the Rhine is a band “with no sign of fatigue, whose moment has finally arrived.” That’s quite a sentiment for a band celebrating 30 years of writing, recording, and life on the road. But as Karin Bergquist states, “There is still so much music left to be made.” Love & Revelation, the new album from Over the Rhine, is a record for right now. The songs have been rigorously road tested and burst at the seams with loss, lament, and resilient hope. The LA Times writes, “The Ohio based husband and wife duo has long been making soul-nourishing music, and the richness only deepens.”

Ellis Paul doesn’t just write songs; he’s a guitar-carrying reporter who covers the human condition and details the hopes, loves, losses of those he observes, turning their stories into luminous pieces of music that get under your skin and into your bloodstream. And much like the artists who have influenced him, everyone from Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to the singer-songwriter who is undoubtedly his greatest inspiration, Woody Guthrie, Paul weaves deeply personal experiences with social issues and renders them as provocative works that are as timely as they are timeless. Born and raised in Maine, Paul attended Boston College on a track scholarship and in the evenings became a fixture on the city’s open mic circuit. After winning a Boston Acoustic Underground songwriter competition, he caught the ear of folk luminary Bill Morrissey, who produced his indie album Say Something in 1993. This led to a seven-album contract with Rounder Records and the 1994 album, Stories. His songs have appeared in several blockbuster films (Me, Myself, and Irene; Shallow Hal, Hall Pass) and have been covered by award winning country artists (Sugarland, Kristian Bush, Jack Ingram). Through a steady succession of albums of his own – a remarkable 23 releases so far – and a constant touring presence around the world, Paul’s audience has grown into a loyal legion of fans. Along the way, he has picked up an impressive number of awards including the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Award, 15 Boston Music Awards, An Honorary Doctorate from the University of Maine, the 2019 International Acoustic Music Awards Artist of the Year and most recently his album, The Storyteller’s Suitcase, was named the 2019 NERFA Album of the Year.

Drawing from a multitude of influences ranging from elegant classical and jazz styles to the rawest, most basic blues, country and soul, Radoslav Lorković has taken on an unusually broad musical spectrum and refined it into his distinctive piano style. His tenure on the R&B and folk circuits has culminated in five critically acclaimed solo recordings and numerous appearances on the recordings of and performances with artists including Odetta, Jimmy LaFave, Ribbon of Highway Woody Guthrie Tribute, Greg Brown, Richard Shindell, Ellis Paul, Ronny Cox, Dave Moore, Andy White, and Bo Ramsey. His thirty year touring career has led him from the taverns of the upper Mississippi River to the castles of Italy, The Canary Islands, The Yup’ik villages of Alaska, The Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. Influenced by his grandmothers, Antonija and Melita, who introduced him to Croatian folk songs and classical music, Lorković showed musical talent from a young age. Moving to the U.S. at six, he was poised for a classical music career until a friend taught him the blues scale at fourteen, igniting his passion for blues. By twenty, Lorković was touring with Bo Ramsey and the Sliders, mastering boogie-woogie and delving deeper into blues. He fused his classical heritage with blues and expanded his repertoire to include Tex-Mex and Zydeco accordion.

As a resolute preservationist, storyteller, and instrumentalist, Dom Flemons has long set himself apart by finding forgotten folk songs and making them live again. His work has been recognized with a GRAMMY Award, Two EMMY Nominations, and 2020 U.S. Artists Fellow. Dom Flemons is originally from Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives in the Chicago area with his family. He has branded the moniker The American Songster® since his repertoire of music covers over 100 years of early American popular music. Flemons is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, actor, slam poet, music scholar, historian, and record collector. He is considered an expert player on the banjo, guitar, harmonica, jug, percussion, quills, fife and rhythm bones. Flemons is the host of the American Songster Radio show on Nashville’s WSM Radio. In 2022, he was awarded a degree as a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater Northern Arizona University.

Available now, Traveling Wildfire is his first new album since 2018’s Black Cowboys and second for Smithsonian Folkways, he turns to an important, overlooked voice that he’s proudly rediscovered: his own. Asked what he hopes his audience will hear in Traveling Wildfire, Flemons replies, “I hope people will be able to hear the different phases of my life through the lyrics and feel the energy that fuels my creativity within the songs. The past few years for me have been a time of deep reflection and meditation. I hope that the album will light a fire of inspiration inside everyone who experiences it.”

William Adams Kimbrough is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer based in Nashville, Tennessee. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Kimbrough began his career with the college band Will & the Bushmen in the 1980s and later formed the Bis-Quits, releasing an album on John Prine’s Oh Boy Records. As a producer, he has worked with artists like Adrienne Young, Rodney Crowell, and Todd Snider.

Kimbrough’s songs have been recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Little Feat, and Jack Ingram, among others. Most recently, their co-written song “Bubbles Up” became Buffett’s first posthumous single and a viral hit. They’ve written more than twenty songs over the years, sometimes remotely trading notes and sometimes working together. Kimbrough has also collaborated with Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, and Mark Knopfler. In 2004, he was named Instrumentalist of the Year by the Americana Music Association. Kimbrough co-founded the band Daddy and joined Trigger Hippy in 2012. He also formed Willie Sugarcapps with fellow Southern Alabama singer-songwriters. Kimbrough’s solo albums showcase his eclectic influences, from folk and blues to punk rock and jazz. His album Wings explores themes of family and career, while Americanitis features anti-war and anti-greed songs. His latest work includes a 2023 Blues Music Award-nominated song, “Too Far to Be Gone.”

Born in Harlingen, Texas, Beth Chapman grew up in a family of five, moving frequently due to her father’s Air Force career. Settling in Alabama in 1969, her musical journey began with a German guitar and songwriting amidst the turmoil of the Vietnam War and civil rights movement. Beth’s debut album, Hearing It First, recorded in Muscle Shoals, was released in 1980. Moving to Nashville in 1985, she wrote #1 hits for Tanya Tucker and Willie Nelson.

Her career includes critically acclaimed albums with Warner/Reprise and collaborations with artists like Emmylou Harris and Elton John. Following personal tragedies, she released Sand And Water, a moving reflection on loss. A breast cancer survivor, her album Deeper Still resonated deeply with fans.

Beth’s music spans genres, with notable works like Prism and the Grammy-nominated The Mighty Sky. Her 2018 album, Hearts Of Glass, showcases her lyrical depth. Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, Beth continues to inspire as a songwriter, teacher, and speaker, with her latest album, CrazyTown, was released in 2022.